Though many areas in America—my own county included—are far from recovering from the economic downfall, most seem to be perking up. If not fully recovered, many major cities are showing sure signs of improvement, often shown through steady progress.

Fresno County seems to be one of these optimistic places. Though many searches that I conducted yielded contrary information—such as job losses—the personal income rate is apparently rising, and job growth is slowly happening, though still more quickly than other local areas. Still, these signs remain small, and some of them are due to seasonal opportunities, particularly in the agricultural sector. Indeed, agriculture and exports seem to be the best sources of income in the area presently—while government jobs, such as those who work in corrections and schools, remain on shaky ground.

Though many new jobs are or are going to be available, most will simply make up for jobs that were lost rather than accounting for actual new growth; hence, unemployment rates themselves will likely not dwindle much until these jobs are all accounted for. If personal income continues to rise at its current rate, however, it will surpass all increases since 2007, when the economic downturn started to become a reality.

And some positive news for those in the Fresno construction business: though jobs in the construction field aren’t necessarily increasing in their availability, they have stopped decreasing, and experts say that the losses have bottomed out to where there’s nowhere to go but up—something we could all look forward to.